It’s been two weeks of leave so far! Here’s a roundup of what I’ve been up to.

Cooking

I’ve been doing a lot more cooking these two weeks! In no particular order and as I can remember:

  • Sour cherry and vanilla scones
  • French toast en masse
  • Butternut squash pasta
  • Winter roots pasta
  • Pumpkin spice honey
  • Experimenting with freezer cocktails
  • Mushroom stroganoff

Later today we’re doing rack of lamb and Indian bitter melon.

Reading

I couldn’t resist a very cute, very tiny box set of The Hobbit + LOTR to celebrate the beginning of my sabbatical. I’m in the middle of The Hobbit now, but it’s slow going because I’ve been much more focused on knitting and videogames. In the last couple weeks I also read:

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, Becky Chambers

goodreads

I have a cute little hardbound copy of Psalm for the Wild Built, the predecessor to this book, but when I bought it Books Inc didn’t have this one. So, as I biked to my last day of work til Christmastime, I forgot to pack the book I was actually reading (Spinning Silver) and needed something to do at the bar for a couple hours, as I quit work around 1 instead of holding out til 4. But this one jumped out at me at Leigh’s - it was on the shelf without its counterpart, and a book about burnout and whether we really have to find purpose seemed so apropos for the beginning of my journey that I bought it. I read it in one sitting at the bar - just enough time for me to wait for my partner and his coworkers to show up in the afternoon.

Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik

goodreads

I read the Scholomance trilogy a couple of years ago and LOVED it, but I hadn’t read any of Naomi Novik’s fairytale retellings. I liked this one quite a lot - it didn’t catch me so much at first, but by the second half I was riveted. It’s a really fascinating blend of fantasy and reality - Miryem, one of the protags, has to contend with both obnoxious winter fae and anti-semitism from her neighbors. Figuring out the mechanics of the magical world and spells around them, then using those mechanics to their advantage to prevail over evil, resulting in prosperity and true love for all. This was just a really fun read, by the end.

Next…

So it’s been a bit slow - again, I’ve been focusing on other things. After The Hobbit, next in line is The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune, and a date with a coffee, a brainless knitting project, and Knitting Without Tears by the formative Elizabeth Zimmerman. I’m intending to take another stab at reading LOTR in print - previously I’ve only successfully finished them via audiobook - and will likely bring the rest of the set with me to Vermont next week.

Videogames

It has been a good few weeks for games. I find them more engaging than reading a book (unsurprisingly), and this week I’ve needed a lot of distraction and comfort. So I’ve been playing:

Satisfactory

My partner and I are around 90 hours into our shared save, working on delivering the Stage 5 components and finally Saving the Day. However, it’s started crashing and generally being odd in multiplayer, so I think we may be done for now. The last bug-fixing patch repopulated all of the world exploration collectibles…which, honestly, kind of sucks.

Tavern Talk

A cute little visual novel a la Coffee Talk. I only did one playthrough and got the true ending; to get the rest of the achievements I’d need to play it again and make mostly opposite choices, then play it at least once more to get the secret bad ending. I’m not sure I want to spend the time - it’s long and pretty linear.

The Witness

I finally rolled credits on The Witness! Not much to say here - there were literally three puzzles between me and credits. I looked up the answer to one of them, I’m sorry to say. I was also reminded why I had such a hard time playing this before - something about this particular perspective and camera effects gives me the super nausea. So, I won’t go and do the secret time trial stuff at the end, I’ll call this good enough and hang onto the happy memory.

A Little to the Left

Oh my goodness this game is SO FUN!!! I enjoyed beating it over a couple evenings. The puzzles are not hard enough that you feel stumped or need a pen and paper, but not so easy that it feels purely like a time filler. I played both DLCs, which I felt were worse quality than the main game, but still a good time.

Fields of Mistria

And here it is. This is the reason I haven’t been reading. After Trump got elected this week, by a popular majority too, my general sense of anxiety and dread has spiked. So I was searching for a cozy blanket of a game to help with the anxiety before I can even start thinking about taking action - and this game nails it.

It is, of course, Yet Another Farming Sim. It has the pixel graphics, like Stardew Valley. It has crops, and cows, and chickens, and a bathhouse, and all the things. But it also has thirst traps! My biggest complaint about SDV is that the entire romance/friendship portion doesn’t appeal to me, because all of the people of Stardew Valley are obnoxious, terrible people. But it’s okay - all of the people of Mistria are hotties made out of fandom tropes.

So, instead of reading books, I’ve been alternately bribing the tsundere rival-to-lover blacksmith with 90’s anime hair so that he’ll admit he loves me, and reading fanfic about said blacksmith angstily admitting he loves the farmer. It’s been… really nice.

Also, the fishing game is much less painful than SDV’s, and the combat is a little better (but still not great). I do still tend to prefer combat-free cozy farming sims, but thanks to SDV the dungeoneering aspect seems to be considered a requirement. Alas.

The Master Hand Knitter Program

I’ve made huge progress these two weeks! And yet, I’m somehow close to where I was when I started my leave. I decided to reknit almost all of the swatches, and I’m absolutely tickled with the improvement I got by doing so. I got a bit further into the questions, and I redid the gauge sheets and did a bit of writing there. I also noticed requirements I hadn’t before, like that the paper is supposed to be 1500-2000 words and I had written 2600, so I did some major editing there as well.

As of now, I’m on question 5(?) out of ~22, and I need to knit the mitten. It was tough to focus this week around the fascism and the dog errands, so I feel like it wasn’t as productive as last week, and I’ll be heading to the library on Sunday to try and put in a full day of question-answering and researching.

I’m still hoping I can get the mitten done and the package out the door before I go to Vermont, but it’s seeming less likely. Perhaps at least I can have my research materials all sorted so I don’t need to take as much shit on the train. We’ll see. Or, maybe I’ll take a break from it and only bring Zach’s kid’s stocking with me, and finish that on the train instead.

Other stuff

The other big fun thing is that this week I went with a dear friend to the Team USA vs. Team Canada women’s national hockey team Rivalry Series game in San Jose. The turnout was just okay, so the energy at the arena left a little to be desired, but I got to sit with my friend’s recreational adult women’s hockey league, which was a TON of fun. Also, I actually saw a few other people in California wearing PWHL gear - a first for me. Also also, I got to drink a beer out of a hockey stick. It was unbelievably stupid.

This week the USA elected Trump as our next president. I usually find political posts after events like this to feel useless or insincere, but I guess I’ll state that I’m incredibly disappointed to see even the popular vote going towards Trump, and I’m pretty worried for the future. The best way to get through it, I think, is at the local community level, so I’ll be trying to be more engaged there. Other than that, I’m not sure what to do besides take care of myself and prepare for the worst.

Up Next

Next week I leave for Vermont. 4 days on the Amtrak, 4 days baking, then flying home in time to get all sorted for Thanksgiving. This year it seems like we will have 11-13 people at Thanksgiving!!! So I’m trying to figure out the food and especially seating for that. Very, very excited for it all. And hopefully I’ll remember to keep posting through it.